This is the excellent foppery of our times: to pretend that what we are dealing with in Washington is some variant of "politics as usual" -- who's in, who's out, the state of play in the political game, the ordinary meshing and thrashing of policy and partisanship in a normal democracy. But all the while, this monstrous crime rages in the background. The blood of a million innocent people killed by the machinations of the America elite flows out of Iraqi soil and permeates every inch of the imperial capital. When our leaders gather in solemn conclave to debate "the issues" -- or yuk it up together at sumptuous bipartisan banquets -- they tread in this blood, they sit in this blood. Yet it is obvious now that nothing on earth will ever make this blood visible, not only to the ones who have perpetrated or abetted its shedding, but also to the people at large, in whose name it has been shed, and who will bear the long-reverberating brunt of the blowback -- financial, political, "asymmetrical" -- from this atrocity.